Pepsi and Kendall Jenner: The Failed Champions of Social Justice
Kendall Jenner on-set with Pepsi on February 4, 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand. Brent Lewin / Getty Images for Pepsi
As a college student and a newly fledged “adult,” one of my main jobs is to participate in the world around me. Incidentally, this has made me increasingly sensitive to the media that I absorb on a daily basis, including and especially advertisements. As an American, I am more than familiar with advertisers and companies capitalizing on what we as consumers care about most: whether that be family, affordability, standing out, fitting in, or any other particular nuances that we look for in our products. Companies are always careful to align their products according to such elements. An ever popular strategy that brands have used quite a lot in recent years has been the capitalization of social justice issues. An advertiser’s main job is to be acutely aware of what is making a splash in media attention, and something that has been brought to the spotlight again and again has been the issue of Black Lives Matter. As this has been such a controversial topic in today’s social culture, it’s no wonder that advertisements that utilize this topic are equally controversial - but maybe not for the same reasons. It raises the question whether or not advertisers are supporting this movement for the right reasons, and if not whether or not it should be done. We need to be asking if it is ethical for companies to use social issues as a marketing strategy. I believe that advertisers should not use social justice issues in their campaigns because they distract from the true message of the social justice movement.
Firstly, we need to agree on a shared meaning of the word “ethical”. Ethical within this context is a synonym for being morally correct, and for advertisers to have discerned whether it is the right thing to do as a company to utilize a social justice issue in question for their advertisement. It’s important for not only me, but people within my general demographic - college-aged, middle class white people that consider themselves allies of people of color - to really consider an issue like this. If we are to truly care about a social issue like Black Lives Matter and critically assess what advertisers are trying to market to us, we should be worried about whether or not companies are missing the message of the social movement and creating more harm than support for a cause such as this. Should we, as supposed allies of a minority cause, tolerate a company that irresponsibly represents what our allies are fighting for within our social climate?
Perhaps one of the best examples of a company pandering to social justice causes for all the wrong reasons is Pepsi’s 2017 ad campaign. Pepsi designed and produced an advertisement that implied representation of the protests for Black Lives Matter, which were at their peak during this time. Another controversial aspect in this ad that really topped off the situation was the fact that Kendall Jenner - yes, the reality TV star and supermodel Kendall Jenner - was pretty much used as the “symbol of youth activism” in this scenario. Let’s collectively pause and really think for a second: do you honestly believe that a rich white girl like Kendall Jenner would be attending a protest in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement? Why would she seriously care about something like that when she is so far removed from that social sphere? Certainly not, and this was one of the foremost criticisms for Pepsi’s campaign. In the commercial, Jenner is first shown posing in some sort of doorway for a photoshoot done up in hair and makeup as a march conveniently passes by her on the street. She looks longingly at the crowd and suddenly decides to join in on the fun they’re having, ripping off her wig and smearing her red lipstick to go out and march with the people. One of her fellow activists hands her a Pepsi can, she takes a sip, then walks right up to the wall of police officers that are monitoring the protest and hands one of them a Pepsi (somewhat like extending the olive branch, but in this case, the Pepsi can because that’s equivalent). The officer takes the soda, sips, Kendall Jenner high fives a crowd member, and everyone cheers! Hooray for social justice!
As a consumer, this is what I have learned through Pepsi: protests are a fun way to socialize and be apart of a community, rich white girls should be the champions of social justice, and nothing brings the people and the police to a mutual understanding quite like handing them a Pepsi can. It was blatantly clear that all Pepsi saw in Kendall Jenner and the Black Lives Matter movements was the attention they were getting in the media, and what better way to get people talking about their product than to mix these two completely unrelated things together? It reveals that their true target audience were not actually the people protesting for their lives and for social reform, but rather white people who want to pretend like they’re woke when it comes to the issue of Black Lives Matter. This demographic of people are only focused on the perception that they are supporting this movement and don’t truly care about any reform because it doesn’t affect them in the slightest. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that the same audience they were trying to reach were the same people that made this ad, and it really shows. The public was rightfully upset about this advertisement, and it finally got to the point where Pepsi took down the ad from their YouTube channel and publicly apologized for the campaign. Kendall Jenner has yet to respond to any criticism she received for being a part of this campaign even two years after the controversy, which really shows you how invested our social justice warrior was in this project.
This “woke” tactic that brands have begun to use over the past few years has most likely proven to be one of the most effective marketing strategies to date. The whole premise behind this “woke” advertising is compelling brands to promote things like equality, standing up for what is right, and most importantly, selling the idea of empowerment. This genre appeals largely and perhaps most specifically on a young liberal audience, targeting their major complaints about societal structures and what they want to change. Jia Tolentino is a deputy editor of Jezebel magazine, a publication that lives off of women’s empowerment. Her essay How “Empowerment” Became Something for Women to Buy not only speaks to how advertisers have manipulated female consumers under the basis of empowerment, but it also applies to any sort of minority group that is vulnerable to this buzzword.
Tolentino deduced that “The word [empowerment] was built on a misaligned foundation; no amount of awareness can change the fact that it’s the already-powerful who tend to experience empowerment at any meaningful rate,” (Tolentino, 180). This notion is perfectly represented with the Kendall Jenner x Pepsi campaign. There was no anger in the crowds they assembled in their commercial, it was never made clear what they were marching for, and Kendall Jenner certainly didn’t care what they were marching for and just joined in because her multi-million dollar modeling job was too boring for her in the moment. This advertisement is not empowering anybody except Kendall Jenner - who no doubt got paid a hefty amount for showing her face in this campaign - and the company themselves who were using such a big topic of conversation for monetary value. In a way, this “empowering” mentality breeds more racism than it tries to eliminate, mostly because it insinuates that white people fighting for Black Lives Matter and similar issues is the only way that any social progress can be made. It doesn’t give any sort of power to the underrepresented groups, keeping them powerless and championing the white saviors over and over again.
This empowerment marketing tactic “dilutes the word to pitch-speak, and the concept to something that imitates rather than alters the structures of the world,” (Tolentino, 181). The advertisers didn’t care who or what they were utilizing as their symbol of social activism, only that their feeble attempt at leveling with the masses would resonate with enough people to buy their product as an extension of their activist identity. As a consumer culture, we are constantly searching for a way to represent our values and our own personal brand, so it feels very special when we find brands that seem to care about the same social issues that we care about ourselves. We are more likely to gravitate towards these products consistently as a representation of our personal brand, which more often than not just leaves the advertiser empowered and us more or less their puppets. Again, this completely ignores the problem that they tried and failed to emulate, and makes a movement that is meant to end the brutality against people of color into a two-dimensional mockery.
This advertising technique may favor the elite and powerful, but its intention is to appeal to the young liberal populous. Most, if not all, social justice issues appeal to the masses to incite social change: first mobilizing the movement among the public, then appealing to the elite government to bring about change. Luckily for advertisers, this is exactly the impressionable pocket of people that they want to sell their populous-based products to, and using social justice issues is just about the perfect way to manipulate this audience into caring about their product. Jack Solomon is an English professor at California State University, Northridge, and in his essay titled Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, he demonstrates the reason why advertisers may not necessarily be using their advertisements to help bring about social change.
Solomon suggests that “Rather than fostering contentment, the American dream breeds desire, a longing for a greater share of the pie,” (Solomon, 153). In other words, advertisers thrive off of people’s suffering and the scrambling for equality and the American dream. In Pepsi’s case, they breed the desire for liberal young white people to be involved in social activism just to show off how involved they are within social politics. They don’t propose a solution to any problem, rather they create more of a problem with supporting this harmful mentality. This is why it’s reasonable to claim that advertisers don’t have any intention in bringing about social change with their campaigns, but rather want them to continue for their own benefit. “Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than to our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentments fostered by the American dream,” (Solomon, 153). Advertising is all about appealing to the consumer’s emotions, and social issues are a fantastic source of emotion for them to exploit. A commonality that I have noticed within myself and other liberal-leaning Americans has been the burning desire to be as far removed from current President Trump and his racist rhetoric. This means finding an identity that goes against his hate speech, and if consumers can associate their identity to a company’s product, then what you have is a powerful guarantee that a mass population will be loyal to that brand as a symbol of what they care about most, even if it’s a Pepsi soda.
Not everyone holds the same opinion as I do, particularly the advertisers themselves. Companies would be in favor of whatever tactics they can use to draw the most attention to their brand and get a specific demographic of people to purchase their products. Ethics and morality is not necessarily the object of concern here, rather the only focus being on what sells. This mentality is where I see the most issue, because it shows that brands could care less what movements they’re supporting and whether their brand has any logical association with what they are throwing their support to. It’s fairly difficult (if not completely impossible) to connect Pepsi soda to the Black Lives movement, especially since they did such a poor job in its representation of it.
Another counter for utilizing social justice issues within advertisements is that bringing attention to these issues through the medium of public advertisement has the potential to give the social movement more momentum and support with a larger demographic of people viewing an advertisement that supports them. This is a tricky argument to make, as it can’t necessarily justify a company using an issue like Black Lives Matter to advertise a product that has nothing to do with the issue. It has more potential to appear as if the company is using the movement with the wrong intent, and is instead contributing to more systematic oppression and therefore miscommunicating the purpose of such a movement. This not only gives the public a false impression of the product being advertised, but a false impression of the social movement, and therefore not reaching the right sort of audience that would genuinely care about the problem.
So, how do we propose a solution? Can this powerful technique be replaced with a reasonable alternative that is less harmful and just as effective? I can’t argue with the fact that social justice issues are a valuable tool when it comes to reaching a wide audience, and perhaps we don’t have to do away with this technique entirely. Rather, I believe it should be left to the leaders of social justice movements to decide who they would like to associate themselves with. As a sign that a company is morally concerned with bringing awareness to an issue for the right reasons, they may consider donating a portion of their revenue post-ad campaign to the social justice groups that they had originally collaborated with. In a partnership like this, both parties would benefit handsomely. The social justice movement could reach the right demographic of people and communicate the true message of the movement, and the advertisers could still reap the benefits of consumers wishing to identify themselves based on a brand that aligns with their values. I believe this solution can be done, and going forward this should be the standard that companies are held to in terms of “woke” advertising should they expect to receive any results from critical young consumers like myself.
Works Cited
Kendall and Kylie. Kendall Jenner for PEPSI Commercial. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5Yq1DLSmQ. Accessed 22 Jan. 2019.
